Custom-Design Your eBay Business There are any number of different ways in which you can sell on eBay. Just because you settle on one option to begin with doesn’t mean you have to stay with it all the time, either. Some sellers start by selling part-time, and then quit their day jobs and sell on eBay full-time. Others fall into selling on eBay as their sole source of income after they lose their job; they sell full-time for a while to make ends meet, then move to selling part-time when another job shows up. The beauty of eBay is that you can tailor the type of selling to fit your needs. The various options are described in the sections that follow.

Sell Part-Time on eBay You can easily fit eBay auction sales activities around your full-time work schedule. Plenty of people do so, from those who sell only a handful of items a month to people who put twenty items online each day. Bob Kopczynksi, who has an active eBay auction business profiled in Article 4, works full-time at another job, but his wife devotes all of her working hours to eBay, and they have several other staff people on call as well. You should, in fact, set a moderate goal for your initial sales on eBay. Starting out by selling perhaps five or six items will help you to ease into the system and get used to how it works. It depends on the amount of time you have available, the number of items you have to sell, and your level of ambition.

Become a Full-Time Auctioneer When you sell on eBay full-time, you make all of your income through eBay. It’s not clear how many people actually do this, but the fact is that individuals all across the country and around the world are selling regularly through the auction site. You get an idea just how many full-time sellers there are by doing a search for Trading Assistants in your state (see the sidebar for this URL on the following page). You’re likely to find lots of individuals with very high feedback, many of whom are probably selling either full-time or on what might be called a “most-of-the-time” basis. When you sell full-time, you have to make a substantial commitment.

You’ll be checking your e-mail regularly, and putting up auction descriptions, packing, and taking photos on a regular basis. You’ll probably benefit by coming up with a regular schedule that calls for you to visit the post office or shipping store at certain times of the week, answer e-mail queries at certain times, take photos at certain times, and so on. You’ll also need to come up with a way to accumulate items to sell, because you’ll be running out of them eventually and you’ll need to replenish your inventory.

eBay Bestsellers When Selling Online Is Fun A friend of mine whom I’ll call Buddhachick (not her real User ID) sold fulltime on eBay for several years, selling as many as 20 to 50 items each week. When she recently took a full-time job, she had to cut back considerably on her sales activities, and now sells only a handful of items at a time. Nevertheless, she still regards selling on eBay as an enjoyable and even creative activity, one that has enabled her to meet plenty of nice individuals from all over the world. “I sell only vintage and antique stuff,” she says. “I basically spend a lot of time combing the newspapers for estate sales and antique auctions, sometimes in my local area and sometimes not so local; every Thursday night, I’m checking Internet newspaper sites for garage sales. Sometimes, I have to get there at 6:30 or 7 A.M. to wait in line so I can find some treasures. My mother was an antique dealer, and my boyfriend’s Dad was in the business. For me, the fun of it is selling stuff I really love. “It’s a little like gambling for me, in that if you find something really valuable, it can be really exciting. One time there was a 1970s belt buckle I bought for $1. It had the words ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ on it. It looked like it was from the original 1970s musical. I sold it for $40. Another time, I helped a woman who bought estates empty the house. She said I could have anything that was left. I laughed because it seemed there was nothing left. I stood on a chair and looked up near the ceiling in the basement.

I pulled out all this junk. Way in the back there was a cigar box full of fishing lures. I sold one really rare one for $1,000. It was my biggest sale.” Buddhachick had some suggestions about how to handle problems that might arise during and after the sale, though she emphasized that such problems don’t occur often. “I do watch my auctions while they are going on. Sometimes people ask me to end the auction early. I never do. A new seller has to do what they think is right. Only once has the offer been higher than the eventual sale price. I just say, “Thank you for your offer” and try to be as courteous as I can, even when I know they are trying to rip me off. “When an auction ends, I also have a standard end of auction e-mail that I send out. I also have one that says, ‘I haven’t gotten your payment yet. Thank you for bidding. Here are the details of how you can pay, and the shipping costs, and the price.’About five percent of my high bidders have turned out to be deadbeats. It hasn’t been a huge problem.” Buddhachick has been able to put her skills to good use when writing descriptions. “One thing I learned is that I have marketing skills I didn’t think I had. I got a degree in creative writing in college, and I put it to work. I think the art of writing the description is important. I have a lot of friends who watch my auctions because they like the way I write my descriptions, and it really makes a difference.” What makes a good description? She says she learned a lot from reading the descriptions created by other sellers. “Someone wrote, ‘I have no doubt the bidders would be thrilled with the condition of this item,’ and I thought, that’s a really good way of saying that the condition is really good.

So I try to say things like that, too. If something has a stain on it, I use the word ‘mark’ or ‘spot.’ I don’t say ‘stain.’ If it’s a tablecloth, I say, there are a few spots where someone must have dribbled coffee. That way the stain is part of the interesting history of the item. I don’t go over the top. I try to be honest but creative. “Another time I had this old Barbie doll in a really tight dress. It was one of the first Barbies. It looked like a 1950s nightclub singer. I said, ‘You’ll have your Barbie sing “Happy Birthday, Mister President,” in an outfit that’s great for serving mint juleps.’ Writing creative descriptions keeps me interested, too. If you’re doing 20 or 30 descriptions in a day, you’ve got to keep yourself interested.” Taking photos is not a big production: she tapes a one-color piece of cloth against the wall, and photographs the item on a table. If the item is light, she uses a dark background, and vice-versa. Buyers who refuse to follow through with payment aren’t a big deal, either. “If you have any kind of business, you’ll run into those kinds of things.

I don’t hold it against people. I’ve never had a check bounce, and I have more than 1,000 feedback.” As far as shipping, she uses the U.S. Postal Service. “I like going to the post office; people there know me, and it’s convenient. I myself hate to pay high shipping costs when I buy, so I keep the shipping cost down. I offer Priority Mail or Parcel Post. I don’t charge a handling fee. “I have a lot of friends on eBay, and we’ll swap information from time to time about what sells and what doesn’t,” she concludes. “I don’t do this full-time now, but I think I spend more than 40 hours a week on it. Still, it doesn’t seem to take that much time when you are having fun.”

Pick the Auction that’s Right for You eBay resembles a virtual ice cream store for auction buyers and sellers. Sales come in many different varieties

- flavors, you might say. You can add additional interest to the flavor of sales you pick by featuring them so they stand out from other sales

- you can make the listings bold or highlight them in a color, or you can feature them in a special category. Which one is the right one for your needs? Here are some quick points to consider based on my experience:

- Keep your starting bid low. Set it to the least amount you’re willing to take. Don’t use your starting bid as your reserve bid. I often see valuable items that have a starting bid of, say, $100. This basically tells bidders that the seller has set a reserve price of $100. Once in a while, you’ll see a bid on such an item, but most times, you’ll see a big 0 in the Bids category. Large starting bids turn people away, because bidders don’t feel they’ll be getting a bargain.

- Do some research by going to the local library and looking up value in a price guide; or search eBay’s Completed Auctions to see what similar items have sold for on the auction site.

- Consider going with No Reserve for some items

- not necessarily the ones you have paid a lot for, but ones that weren’t expensive to begin with. No Reserve sales tend to get more bids than others (though this isn’t a hardand- fast rule).

- If you have a number of items to sell that are exactly the same and that don’t constitute a set, such as a set of six jazz albums you uncovered in the bargain bin at a music store, consider a Dutch Auction format. In general, a good item will sell no matter what reserve price, starting bid, or Buy It Now price you put on it. Over and over, you find people who were astonished to find that they had a beer can from the 1940s and sold it for more than $16,000, for example. (See Uncle Griff’s Web site, http://www.unclegriff.com , for this and other success stories.) Don’t agonize too much over these details; just put your items out there and give them a chance to sell through a good description and clear images.

Review Your Auction Options Real estate sellers have always known that location counts for a great deal. Locating your sale in the right part of the eBay auction world can make the difference between making your sale a hot item or a dud. Whether you’re a full-time or a sometime trader, one of the first steps to mastering eBay is simply understanding the different kinds of auctions that are available to you. The following sections give you an overview of the various auction categories on eBay.

Regular Online Auction The classic type of eBay auction, the one you see most of the time, enables sellers to sell to the highest bidder after a fixed length of time. Auctions can list 3, 5, 7, or 10 days (real estate auctions can run for 30 days). eBay simply calls this a “regular” auction. Ten-day auctions will cost you an extra ten-cent listing fee. This fee does not apply to three-, five-, or seven-day auctions.

Reserve Price Auction A reserve price auction is the same as a regular auction in that it lasts for a fixed amount of time, and the sale goes to the high bidder

- but the difference is that the high bidder only wins if his or her bid meets or exceeds an amount the seller has designated as a reserve price. A reserve price protects a seller against selling something for less than what it’s worth. If a seller simply won’t part with something for less than $50 because that’s what it cost in the first place, the seller puts a reserve of $50 on the item. Bidders only know that there is a reserve price; the auction listing makes it clear whether or not the reserve price has been met or not. The actual reserve price is kept secret. See “When to Use Reserve Auctions” later in this article for more.

Online Auction with Buy It Now Price You can also sell an item for a fixed price called a Buy It Now price. However, if you choose the Online Auction format, the Buy It Now price disappears when the reserve price is met. For instance, if you have an item you paid $10 for and you think (and hope) it’s worth $20, you can put a reserve price on it of $10, and an initial bid of $1. Additionally, you can put a Buy It Now price on the item of $20 in the hope that someone will purchase it immediately at the price you consider ideal. The problem with Buy It Now is that it depends on you making an accurate estimate of how much an item is really worth in a worldwide marketplace full of collectors whose tastes and pocketbooks you can’t really predict. You never know if the item you sell at a Buy It Now price of $20 might really have sold for $200 to someone who was looking for an item to fill out his or her collection.

Fixed Price A fixed price sale isn’t really an auction: you offer something for sale at a fixed Buy It Now price, and you don’t allow people to bid on the item. People can buy it at any time during the sale for a fixed price.

Dutch Auction A Dutch auction is one in which the seller puts two or more identical items up for sale. The seller then specifies the minimum successful price for each of those items, as well as the number of items available. Potential buyers can buy at or above the minimum for the number of items in which they are interested. At the close of the auction, the highest bidders purchase the items at the lowest successful price (that is, the lowest bid that is still above the minimum price). An example should make this easier to grasp. Suppose you uncover a box full of ten Chuckles the Cat Bean Bag Babies at a garage sale. You put all ten up for sale at the same time in a single Dutch auction. You specify a minimum bid of $20 for each cat. Eighteen separate bidders place bids: One bids $30, two bid $25, three bid $24, two bid $22, two bid $21, and the rest bid $20. The ten highest bidders win: these are the individuals who bid $30, $25, $22, and $21, respectively. However

- and this is the confusing part

- in a Dutch auction, they all purchase at the lowest successful price, which is $21. Those who bid $20 lose out because there are no more than ten cats available.

Fixed-Price (on Half.com) If you have surplus items for sale, such as articles or electronics equipment, and you are at all anxious about auction sales, Half.com provides an attractive and straightforward alternative. Sellers put up items for a fixed price; there is no bidding. There’s also little or no chance for fraud; buyers pay Half.com, which then turns around and pays the seller. See Article 14 for more about selling on this unique alternative to eBay.

Real Estate Auctions You would be amazed at how many individuals put up real estate for sale through eBay. The system works particularly well if you have property for sale that might appeal to a wide variety of bidders throughout the world

- such as a time share in the Bahamas, for instance. Your ad can appear for 30 days or 90 days in eBay’s Real Estate section.

How to Use Reserve Auctions Most of the auctions you find on eBay are reserve price auctions. A reserve price is a way you can protect your investment: it’s a price you set that represents the lowest price at which you are willing to sell an item. Usually, your reserve price isn’t disclosed to bidders, so they are encouraged to bid as high as they wish. If someone’s bid goes above the reserve price you have specified, you are required by eBay to sell it to that high bidder. On the other hand, if the bids that have been placed fail to meet your reserve price, you aren’t required to sell to anyone. Just because no one meets your reserve price, that doesn’t mean you can’t sell. You and the high bidder can negotiate a sales price. You can send an e-mail saying, “My reserve price was $____ and I’ll sell it to you for that much,” for instance. Or, if you think you’ll have better luck trying again, you can relist your item in a couple of weeks. Here’s an example. Suppose you find a doll from the 1960s at an estate sale for $20. Naturally, you want to sell the doll for at least $20 plus your listing fees and any expenses you have incurred in obtaining the item (gas, time, effort, and the time involved in creating the auction listing. You put a reserve price of $25 on the doll when you create the auction listing. You also set an initial bid

- a bid at which you want the auction to start

- of as low as one cent, but more commonly, about $1. You do this in the Sell Your Item form. You have an additional option to consider

- whether you want to give bidders the option to stop the sale and simply sell the item for a fixed price that you consider reasonable. Suppose, for the doll in question, you’ve done some research through doll catalogs and completed eBay auctions and you have determined that it must be worth $100. You put a Buy It Now price of $100 on the doll, which gives bidders the opportunity to buy it immediately. You save some time and trouble, and you sell to someone you can be reasonably sure is going to follow through with payment. The prevailing wisdom about starting bids is that, the lower the starting bid, the more likely you are to attract any bids at all. Higher starting bids scare off bidders who are afraid that the bidding will go too high and they’ll never win. There’s another consideration about setting the starting bid, however: The lower the starting bid, the more bids are required to meet your reserve price. This can work to your advantage, however: a sale that attracts 30 bids or more is designated as a “hot item” and eBay adds a matchstick icon to its listing. This tells bidders that the item is especially desirable and is likely to attract more attention.

When to Use Featured Auctions Chances are you’ve spent a considerable amount of time finding, hauling, photographing, and describing your merchandise. You can go a step further and make your sale items appear exceptional by placing them in special categories. Featuring an item in these specialized categories costs extra, and items offered for sale in those categories tend to cost more, too. But the merchandise in these featured categories generally is unique and hard to find.

Featured Auctions Featured Auction listings appear at the top of the main Listings page, which is accessible from the menu bar at the top of every page on eBay. Additionally, some Featured Auction listings are randomly selected to appear on the eBay home page. However, there’s no guarantee when or whether a certain item will appear in this well-traveled, highly popular location. To create a Featured Auction, you need to meet certain requirements. You must have ten or more positive feedback comments, and the merchandise listed can’t include adult items or things that eBay judges to be “illegal, illicit, or immoral.” Find out about Featured Auctions and Category Featured Auctions (more information on these in the next section) at http://cgi3.ebay.com/awcgi/ eBayISAPI.dll?Featured.

Featured Plus! Auctions Sellers must have a feedback rating of at least ten to list items as Featured Plus! Auctions, but they aren’t subject to the other restrictions that apply to Featured Auctions (see the previous section). Featured Plus! Auctions appear at the top of the first Web page for the eBay category in which they fall. Paying the extra $19.95 listing fee is a good way to get attention for an exceptional item, particularly if the listings in its category run to 30, 40, or even moreWeb pages. As with Featured Auctions, the seller decides whether an item is special enough to fall into this category. Featured Auctions or Featured Plus! Auctions don’t have to be more unique or notable than other auction listings. In fact, they might be items that need a little extra attention in order to attract bidders.